U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) recently released a public draft of the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act as a bi-partisan alternative to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the…
Posts Tagged ‘Online’
Legal Forms In Spanish
01
Dec
Legal forms in Spanish 100s of online legal documents and resource information in Spanish language. Professional legal forms
for less than the price of lunch.
How Do Lawyer Bidding Sites Work?
30
Nov
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Recently several Web sites have emerged that enable consumers to bid for legal services. Examples include: ExpertBids and Shpoonkle. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce it). They all work pretty much the same way.
You submit a description of your project or the service you want, your location and your estimated budget. You create a secure account with a user name and password. Your service request is then posted or published to a lawyers who have registered for the service so they can bid on your work. When a lawyer bids for your work, you receive an email (each bid includes a rate, a description, and the lawyer’s profile, rating and client reviews). When the lawyer bids, whether bid by the hour or fixed price, you receive an email which includes a rate, a description, and the lawyer’s profile, rating and client reviews. The process gives you options and a basis for comparing how different lawyer;s will submit bids and pricing for similar work.
The process is always free to the potential client. Once you are connected to a lawyer you can continue your conversation either online or off-line. The sites enable you to communicate with the lawyer online directly, but often you don’t get any free legal advice or any legal service until you accept a retainer agreement and the lawyer/client relationship is established.
For law firms that have learned how to offer legal services for common legal matters for a fixed fee, these bidding sites could be another channel to the consumer and potential clients. These law firms, often virtual law firms, are low-cost producers of legal services, and can out bid more traditional legal firms without sacrificing quality or their profit margins.
Many of these law firms offer what are called, “limited legal services”, which enable these law firms to offer a low cost solution to consumers, but often consumers have no understanding of this concept. See for example the law firms listed in the MyLawyer.com Directory of Virtual Law Firms. We think that the bidding sites should have articles and information on their web sites describing the “limited legal service” concept as this would be way to educate consumers about another way to cost effectively buy legal services.
A problem that we see with the bidding sites that we reviewed is that there is no easy for the consumer to describe that they want “limited legal services“, as distinguished from traditional legal services. There are options for bidding by the hour, or by the project, but no option for limiting the scope of representation. “Unbundling legal services“, is a relatively new idea, but many states (more than 35) have already passed amendments to their Professional Rules of Responsibility that enable law firms to offer “limited legal services” as long as the retainer clearly defines the scope of representation.
I think this is a critical gap in the way the operators of these site understand how middle class consumers want to purchase legal services. I also think that there is likely to be a disconnect between what the consumer bids for a service, and what they law firm delivers for the bid price. Without a clear specification of the scope of services, there is bound to be miscommunication and confusion.
It is too early to predict whether these “bidding sites” will survive. In the “dot-com boom and bust” era, there were several experiments with lawyer bidding, but all the sites failed because they could not generate enough volume to support their overhead structure.
Susan Cartier Liebel, the President of Solo Practice University has written a good blog post analyzing these sites, that is worth reviewing by consumers who are interested in this approach to securing legal services.
Breath Alcohol Calculator
30
Nov
Breath alcohol calculator free online – What would yours be? Try this breathalyzer.
How much or how little it takes for you to become an impaired driver?
Online Jobs Work From Home
30
Nov
Online jobs work from home – turn your passion into profit
like we did – can it be done? Yes, we did it and so can you. Legitimate and profitable online jobs from home. Free eCourses to show you how..
In re SOPA: Library Copyright Alliance v. Register of Copyrights
23
Nov
I would like to be very clear at the outset. It is my view that if Congress does not continue to provide serious responses to online piracy, the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail. The premise of copyright law is…
TR/Westlaw China Gobbles Up iSinolaw
22
Nov
Sadly, I must report about the latest so-called merger of online publishers. I just received a letter from Stephan Yao, CEO or Thomas Reuters Legal, China and Gordon Wong, Business Director of iSinolaw. According to this letter, the two companies…
"The physical book is a jail for ideas" – Prensky
21
Nov
When I first started reaching Marc Prensky’s Commentary, In the 21st Century University, Let’s Ban Books, (Page A30 of the November 18th Chronicle of Higher Education if you don’t have an online subscription), I thought it was going to be…
SOPA Goes To A (Carefully Managed) Hearing
16
Nov
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is headed to a hearing today before the full House Judiciary Committee. Well, we’ll call it a hearing because there is at least one party testifying that opposes the bill, and that is Katherine…
Short Takes On The News: Some Tech, Some Scandal And Outrage, And Some Law
11
Nov
CNET has a positive review of a new reader for Google Books that is not from Google. Called GooReader, the product is described as “is a desktop application that allows you to read Google Books online and offline, add Bookmarks,…
